How to work out why a property is not selling

The answer, straight away

A property that is not selling has four possible causes, and they should be examined in this order: the price, the presentation, the channel, and the fact that it is being shown to the wrong people.

Almost everybody starts with price because it is the only immediate lever. Often it is not the broken one, and cutting it without understanding burns the only move you had.

First cause: the price

Checked against completed comparable sales from the last two years, not against the asking prices of properties still on the market.

The signal that price is the problem: plenty of viewings and no offers. If people come, look and do not return, the product is fine and the number is not.

Second cause: the presentation

The signal is the opposite: almost no viewings. If four people have called in three months, the problem sits before the house.

Badly shot photographs, a description listing square metres instead of what it is like to live there, no floor plan, the wrong lead image.

Third cause: the channel

The property is in the right place for an audience that is not its own. A fine villa on a generalist portal attracts enquiries from people who cannot buy it, and none from those who could.

The signal is plenty of enquiries, all off target.

Fourth cause: the wrong people

The hardest to see. The property is shown to those looking for something that resembles it, rather than to those looking for exactly that.

The signal is feedback that always stops at the same point. Three buyers saying the same thing are not three refusals: they are a diagnosis.

What time does while you wait

A property visible for months communicates that nobody wants it. From then on every negotiation opens downwards, and the price history stays visible.

Devaluation is not a theory: it is the measurable effect of months of exposure.

How you restart

Take it off the market. Fix the cause identified. Wait long enough for the market's memory to fade, and meanwhile work the confidential channel with buyers who already exist.

Republishing the same property with the same photographs at a lower price is the fastest way to confirm that everybody was right to wait.

The question to ask the agent

How many viewings, how many offers, and what the people who did not come back actually said.

If those three numbers do not exist, that is part of the problem too.